I’m a few days late with this because I worked my ‘day job’ (which is a very weird term considering my *real* day job is caring for the kids and writing, more aptly it would be my ‘once or twice a week’ job ;p ) both public holidays, and the moment I came home on the second day we jumped in the car to head off for Xander’s birthday trip. I hope this busy-ness isn’t a sign of the year to come ;p
First, I’ll break down 2016 by the goals I set at the start of the year.
Goal #1 – Finish the edits of Written By The Stars. Gah, I did try a couple of times, but honestly I’m stymied by the same problem as last time, I just don’t know if I’m ‘fixing’ things that are good as they are and leaving things that do need repair. I think I need to just get some beta readers to go over it this year and use their feedback to help instead of boiling my own brain endlessly over it.
Goal #2 – Be the best president I can be of my writers group, Vision Writers. If being voted in again is a good guideline as to success in such a role then: success. 2016 saw a LOT of extra jobs in regards to this fall in my lap, several which I thought would be taken care of by others. Most of them were my own over-ambitious fault though ;p
Goal #3 – Work on my several novellas I published The Troll’s Toll and all the reviews on Amazon are very positive. I’ve got Glass Slippers almost to beta-reading point, and Skeleton Romance turned out to be a novel, not a novella. Quite happy with this one’s result.
Goal #4 – Keep writing and selling short fiction. I wrote 5 new short stories (about 50,600 words worth) and sold Glass Bones (being published very soon in the WARRIOR anthology from Ink and Locket Press), Hanabi to Kitsune, The Beauty of the Dance (published in Myriad Lands from Guardbridge Books) and God’s Chosen in Darkest Depths anthology from Vision Writers. Also published in 2016 (though not exactly ‘sold’ in 2016) were Gaps in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #63 and Charming in Leading Edge Magazine #68. I also have had the honor of having an editor approach me and ask me if I’d like to write a story for their next anthology (I’m currently working on the story).
Goal #5 – Finish one of the NaNo novels I started – dismally failed as I didn’t even try it 🙁
Goal #6 – Work with as many editors as I can. This went great. I worked with editors on Gaps, Charming (a whole team on this one 😀 ), Glass Bones, The Beauty of the Dance, and God’s Chosen.
Goal #7 – Find some dedicated beta readers. I didn’t get very far with this one sadly, but again, didn’t work as hard on it as I could have.
Goal #8 – Keep Learning. A good result and fairly easy considering how many editors I got to work with. Additionally I learned how to format an ebook and layout a print book, as well as discovering new story structures such as kishotenketsu. I also listened to a LOT of podcasts, including The Creative Penn, The Self Publishing formula, the Novel Marketing Podcast, and Writing Excuses.
So over all quite a good year. I wrote 134,000 new words and did a sizeable amount of editing and other writing endeavors. I could have done better on the novel side of things though.
As for 2017’s goals:
- Publish at least three more of my Retailored Fairy Tales
- Finish first draft, complete edits, and get to beta readers ‘Skeleton Romance’ (also give it a real title ;p )
- Continue writing and traditionally publishing stories (won’t be hard with three sales already due for release ;p )
- Continue learning
- Continue being an awesome president of Vision Writers Group
- Write at least three more Retailored Fairy Tales
- Complete a novel (as in to the point I can resume submitting to agents)
So there’s a few very specific ones, and a few looser more general ones but I’ll certainly be kept busy.
Work with determination, you must sure with your goals.